Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/105

Rh tale rises from the complications produced by the carpenter's son, who overhears the god Gunputti as he teaches Vicram the mystic words which enable him to pass from his own body into another; but as he could not see the antidote which Vicram received to keep his tenantless body from decay, the carpenter's son was but half enlightened. No sooner, however, had Vicram transferred his soul to the parrot's body, than the carpenter's son entered the body of Vicram, and the work of corruption began in his own. The pseudoraja is at once detected by the Wuzeer Butti, who stands to Vicram in the relation of Patroklos to Achilleus, or of Theseus to Peirithoos, and who recommends the whole court to show a cold shoulder to the impostor, and make his sojourn in Vicram's body as unpleasant as possible. Worn out at last with waiting, Butti sets off to search for his friend, and by good luck is one of the throng assembled to witness the ascension of Champa Ranee. Butti recognises his friend, and at once puts him into safe keeping in a cage. On reaching home it became necessary to get the carpenter's son out of Vicram's body, and the Wuzeer, foreseeing that this would be no easy task, proposes a butting match between two rams, the one belonging to himself, the other to the pseudo-raja. Butti accordingly submits his own ram to a training, which greatly hardens his horns; and so when the fight began, the pretended raja, seeing to his vexation that his favourite was getting the worst in the battle, transported his soul into the ram's body, to add to its strength and resolution. No sooner was this done, than Vicram left the parrot's body and re-entered his own, and Butti, slaying the defeated ram, put an end to the life of the carpenter's son, by leaving him no body in which to take up his abode. But fresh troubles were in store for Butti; and these troubles take us back to the legends of Brynhild and Persephone, of Tammuz (Athamas), Adonis, and Osiris. Not yet cured of his wandering propensities, Vicram goes to sleep in a jungle with his mouth open, into which creeps a cobra who refuses to be dislodged—the deadly snake of winter and darkness, which stings the beautiful Eurydike, and lies coiled around the maiden on the glistening heath. The raja, in his intolerable misery, leaves his home, just as Persephone is taken away from Denieter, and Butti seeks him in vain for twelve years (the ten years of the struggle at Ilion), as he roams in the disguise of a fakeer. Meanwhile, the beautiful Buccoulee, who had recognised her destined husband under his squalid rags as Eurykleia recognises Odysseus, had succeeded in freeing Vicram from his tormentor, and thus all three returned to the long forsaken Anar Ranee. But before we examine incidents which take